Lock Up A Heart and Swallow the Key
by Broken Antler in Winter
Summary: He lives with vigor and life, as it is meant to be. He dies with youth and grace, as it is meant to be. "No one will ever love you like he does. No one will ever love him like you do." Open-ended interpretation, ambiguous Young Justice main character, dashes of love, and vague character death. Read at your own peril. "Eternally untouched..." Maybe he's Iron Henry.
1. Lock Up A Heart and Swallow the Key

**AN: This came out of about thirty minutes spent in the classroom wondering why the heck I was there. The first stroke of inspiration was when I thought, out of nowhere, "He lives loud and colorful, as it is meant to be. He dies young and with vitality, as it is meant to be. **

**I don't know where it came from, but here is the result. I guess I'm a sucker for the tragic and mournful. Open interpretation, let the pairing be Spitfire, Chalant, SuperMartian, Bluepulse, Execute, Birdflash, Hummingbird, Aster, Traught, Torpedo, SeaArrow, CheshRoy, HatxFloor, DickxCereal, BatCat...**

**Just choose your OTP and apply it to this...drabble? Vignette? What's the right word? How about the words of contemplations? Sure. **

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**Lock Up A Heart and Swallow the Key**

_No one will ever understand you like he does. _

He lives loud and striking, an ever-shifting nebula of smiles and emotions laid out for the world to lives to touch the lives of those around him, overarching fingertips caressing the finer points of life lightly, hint of superficial delight. He lives graceful, purposeful, corners of lips tilting upwards in delight.

Life is happiness, enjoyment, youth, laughter, and vitality.

Somehow, the tantalizing meanings of life pass easily through the gossamer web of his hidden, sibylline, frostbitten heart, pale hands only taking the slightest of cares to brush by the souls around him.

The heart is still untouched and icy, delicate yet so very strong to withstand those trials that turn into nothing except for memories half-forgotten. A cold warmth in a steam-powered clockwork human of intricacies, beautifully crafted into a passion.

The silky threads of love and admiration are barred from the rusting hinges of his heart's doors, of past, of present, of future, discarded and strewn with dusty cobwebs and wilted bluebells. The iron key worlds ago had been crushed to powder for the prison to suffer when the winter chill comes.

Soul and spirit are hollow, already stolen by the wayward snake sprite wandering a lonesome countryside. It once transformed and posed as family, only to betray and and forge the iron bands across the dimly lit heart.

A heart sought for, reached, with the end result of naught but a lightest of taps on the beating veins.

_No one will ever love you like he does._

He lives in the barrier of movement, twists, flips turn into clouds of dust, ashes of time. He lives for duty, behind a mask of not only fabrics and wire, but also a barrier of laughter and distraction. When a smile is a shield and a laugh is a barrier, jokes and joys make it easy to not want to find anything else.

No one knows there is anything else underneath, no one wants to find the broken shell of a thing inside.

He dies young, in his prime, as he means it to be, living once simply to flourish and cheer, blooming in a multitude of flagrant auroras of a million hues. His life and presence changed the souls of his fellowships, yet it does not save him from his fate.

Though eyes are shocked and screams echo, everyone understands what happens when the coffin is dropped. He chose this life. He lives with it, he dies with it.

It ends in an explosion of light and sound as the bullet sails towards an exposed chest, bursting into petals of blood flying through the wind as the sound of the thud echoes tiredly through the place of death. Lifeblood pours, he dies as gracefully and as magnificent as he lives. The mask is finally removed, and the dimming spark in the eyes brings tears forward.

He dies for his cause, nothing more, nothing less.

The vitality and youth is as easily extinguished as a beeswax candle, and the world laments the loss of a smiling soul, who lived life to the fullest, when really he was a shattered spirit in need of mending, but no one ever saw.

_No one will ever mourn him like you do. _

That perfect, ornate, polished exterior is mourned, lamented, missed, and marvelled for. The lasting image in the memorial's grotto flickers underneath the cave ceiling, silent lies reverberating off the limestone walls.

He leaves behind an image just as skewed as the empty illusion he holds in life. It's a hologram image that casts shadows instead of light, hailed as so many things only an illusion. They need him more in death than in life.

It is admired, a standard. He dies for those around him to love his memories, lasting marks insignificant on the vast plains of time, but valued nonetheless.

And he will forever be remembered.

Yet there is always that gilded cage, holding a never-again heart filled with clotted lifebloods and could-have-been romances barred at the rising gates, the forever still heart that remains, eternally, untouched.

Except for just one lost time.

_No one will ever love him like you do. _

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**I know, depressing, right? My mind is like that. Anyways, I don't know where I was going with this. If anyone wants to know why I used a 'he' instead of 'her', it is because, well, majority of fanfiction readers are female, so therefore someone fathomable as an object of love will usually be male. **

**It was haunting my mind a little, and if anyone wants to know what the words meant for me, read this: **

**This was about a member of YJ (or JLA), and him living a life of the moment and of substance, giving smiles to the people around him, and dying young because that is his life choice he must live and die with. His lover on the land of mortals has some voice talk to her/him (Scarecrow toxin), those are the italics, that is what I tell you.**

** I will not, however, tell you what pairing I had in mind _after_ I wrote this (I didn't have one in mind _when _I wrote this). **

**Review, please!**


	2. We'll Smile While the World Burns

**And even though hardly anyone read the last one, I liked writing this and I churned up another one during class. I was bored. Really, really bored.**

**Once again (though I highly suspect most readers have never read the first one, but it's chapter 1, so who knows), This will be a highly open-ended interpretation, you can chose whatever you wanna think about it. And yes, it is a pairing, just read the ending. **

**It can be any pairing at all, and the two can be in any role at all. It could even be your OT3! Though, I don't recommend it. **

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**We'll Smile While the World Burns**

It's a subtle thing, a tilting of the corners of lips, enticing, charming, mysterious. It's an intricate maze of clashing ideals and the hope or conviction that all will be well, all woven into that one, delicate feature which can weather through all life will cut it with. It's a little irking, a little deceiving, a little reassuring, and a little white lie.

Appearances can be deceiving, and in this case it is more than true. It's purpose is nothing but to let you live in the comforting hands of ignorance.

Life seems kind, good, telling everyone that soon, all's well that ends well.

Yet the real smile has long since been stolen by the hailstorm of heartless tragedy rained down on the stiff, strong shoulders. Snow has frozen the lips into the crystalline statue of calm and content, no cracks to reveal if the facade is anything but an image.

It's the charming Southern belle teasingly within reach, yet always moving just out of arms length.

Resilience is it's greatest characteristic, through war and peace, horror and harmony, life and death, the smile is carefully carved into the stoic statue of a perfect hero, even when the eyes are hidden behind masks, light dimmed and squandered into grandiose stone catacombs of memories.

It's a face of a scarred, mutilated soul, scarring fading under layer after layer of empty shells. When a smile is _just as good_ of a shield as a stoic face, _just as good_ to hide the cracks so hastily patched together, a _crooked_ smile _unmoving_ and _never changing._ Never showing the endless demons within the old-beyond-years irises.

Once a Ming china vase glinting, so perfect, so innocent, a paragon of loved and free, soon thrown carelessly on the ground by that vengeful skin-walker, shapeshifter, _liar_, abandoned for the dark, coldhearted woods and soul-sucking midnight prowls.

Naivety is dashed as the porcelain shatters into broken glass pieces on the dirty ground.

It's never so simple as enduring through disaster, yet falling or failing to keep the melody morphs the childlike joy into a half-broken metronome, ringing that unchanging rhythm, hauntingly sweet and so very devastating, perplexing. Clinging on to the last shred of a broken childhood and a broken past.

Used to be something marvelled at, now it is nothing but a china doll cracked and torn, while the smile remains through the screams. Freak. Monster. _Why is it smiling?_

It's a misunderstood little thing.

A tragic acceptance, and desperate last hope hidden under pretty little paints into a lovely picture with a violently ripped canvas. The curving of lips is a little cynical, a little mocking, a little dark, a little playful, and weathered by the unrelenting, charming, and sadistic little sylph of fate.

Yet, once the inferno starts, it is the only thing left.

An anchor to the joy the world once knew, fading away to dust while the earth and sky stand stoic and unmoved by pleas, flaming in a last glory. It remains so reassuring and so wistful, a reminder of the past quickly torn apart by the Kindly Ones not so merciful.

And as the world begins to end in the firelight and moonshine, as ashes and dust are scattered and gone with the ceaseless maelstrom, it remains unchanged.

While skyscrapers crash into unrecognizable mounds on the ground, while corpses bloat into rivers of blood, looking back and see that smile, it's never surrendering in the face of adversary. It stands stoic in the face of disaster, pits of dark plasma raining from the sky. It wants the old days back and shows that false hope that maybe it will return.

Through the death, so much _death and grief. _So many souls lost to the failure to do their job as _heroes. _That's how it works, saving people, but there will always be those times when the Earth's greatest heroes just weren't _great enough._

It was never supposed to end this way.

People it loved are thrown into the guileful claws of death, the lips will nonetheless tilt lovingly, hand holding your hand reassuringly, tight, standing tall together in the face of certain death.

It will always be here to hold your hand, til death do you part.

Life is darkest before the dawn, and the smile is the beam of light leading the rosy fingers of Eos into the war torn world.

Following that white light into a world far beyond the grief, it laughs once again, showing ivory-white teeth, giving a hasty, crooked kiss, eyes still covered by fabrics, wire, or maybe tinted glass, and always empty of the joy it attempts to bring. It mouths words soul-stirringly inspiring and the slightest bit alluring, tempting, a singing siren.

"Smile, everything will be alright."

Even upon death, it will forever prevail, unchanged.

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**This feels so fatalistic. Oh well. Tis my very nature to ponder on these things. So...who cares who you think the two people are. Basically: Someone who always smiles even through all the evils in the world, and when the world ends and death comes...smile.**

**I wrote this even though the previous one had hardly any feedback. Why then, did I do it? Well...meh...I was inspired. I mean, who writes on FF for the reviews? It's nice and all but...at the end of the day...**

**It's just getting the idea out of your head so you don't start typing out the stories while finishing your assignments. **

**Review!**


	3. Once Upon a Time in a Fairytale

**AN: Here we go again! And that's basically the whole author's note. Sorry for not doing ATE instead, thwippy (yes, I've decided to call you that now). I need my release and venting. **

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**Once Upon a Time in a Fairytale**

_For once, the hero is about to lose. _

Water rises to her neck as he laughs into the air. It's like the jingling of sleigh bells, and it isn't _fair _that he could be laughing so lightly in the way she loves while tearing apart her soul. Blood dyes the once-clear waters a crimson, while the laugh continues like a broken record, repeating, repeating, _repeating. _

She wonders if there's some other way.

He walked into their cave, so kind and so virtuous, another wayward traveller to be taken in by their caring hands. She was broken by the past, and he was ready to mend her, life was good, kind, and life was _fun. _So hesitant and so kind, he won their hearts so fast, so fast that they were blinded watching so many clues that could have saved them, but no...

A life for a life, he said. In a blink of an eye, he is no longer the teammate, ally, confidant, friend, _love _that he once was. He becomes a Purgatory demon, eyes bloody and ravenous.

Once upon a time, a princess gave a prince her heart, and in return he left, he left and crushed the still-beating delicacy in his bloodstained fingertips. Once upon a time, the princess decided to forgive, decided that when he came back, she would grow him another one, hardier and steadier, that would live underneath his test of the strength. Once upon a time, he came back a demon from Hell, barely recognizable.

Her Majesty's advisors tell her it is foolish to seek the prince once again, so she leaves the demon be, until the prince returns, pleading for her heart once again, her heart locked in a little cage only for his eyes to see.

Life gives her death and destruction far too much, so she ignores the instincts and the logic because her soul is long ago ensnared by the silver-tongued shapeshifter at her doorstep. True love is the other princesses, until she sees his eyes again, like stars, he is her sun, moon, star, everything.

It's yesterday once more.

And as she gives him his heart, it does not crush under his fingertips, he breaks it instead.

Reality chooses this time to rear its ugly head as all the charades collapse under the weight of rage mingled with hatred. He leers at her with all her might as he takes that sick, perverse pleasure in slowly, systematically breaking every single one.

She doesn't know what to think anymore.

He was, once upon a time, everything to her, and now he is the enemy. She wishes that he would jump out of all of the blood, flesh, death, and shattered glass, eyes bright, and tell her it was all a sick, twisted joke.

Wishing and praying doesn't do anything, she has that one shot in her hands, the one shot to end it all, save her true, _real _family, but the consequences...she doesn't think she can live with the consequences.

All her life, all her new life as a princess in a castle of heroes, she has been taught to never kill, never harm unnecessarily. This one shot...it would save all the puppets, cutting off the threads of silk binding them to that manipulative master. This one shot...it was a two-way street that came back and burned her heart.

Shattered to dust...

Once upon a time, the princess and the prince were joyous, living glorious lives of goodwill and kindness. The wizard told them that life would always be so, happy and without cares. Once upon a time, they found out the wizard was a liar and a traitor, and that he had friends. Once upon a time, a kingdom was thought to be safe once again. Once upon a time, the princess forgot to look elsewhere.

The kingdom she used to rule is gone, the castles slowly crumble into nothing but dust under the stars. She is no hero in the eyes of the others, she is a fragile thing, lost of the former glory, and they let her continue in her fight knowing that she is just a child playing the role of the true warrior.

She doesn't know what to think anymore.

Over the line of hero and villain he toes regularly, and she doesn't know if it's a game anymore. She doesn't know if it will ever go back to the way it was once upon a time. But she wants that so much, the endless bliss and the-

They're screaming. Her friends, all drowning in the limelight of attention, affection, and vengeance like a drug. It's in her _hand _and the only way to _stop _him before the curtains close and it all turns sour. She knows...

Everything has a consequence, all actions have reactions. She has the last resort in her hands, sleek and dark as a Saturday night in the city, screaming on the top of her lungs and feeling young, full of life, full of _freedom. _Freedom from the past and freedom from the future, all is happily ever after.

Foolishness is not her nature. She knows she'll never have that life again.

Right now he's standing there, he doesn't think she's strong enough to fire the last shot, he never thought she was strong enough, and as much as she believed in his lies, he was only playing a masquerade ball of flattering for survival and praising to a goal. A final destination.

"All I want to do is take you there," she whispers as the water reaches her chin, and breathing becomes a labor. Her eyes are watering, nevertheless the target is clear.

All her life, it is about decisions, decisions to surrender, decisions to carry on, and decisions to fire or not to fire. She can never predict if the decision she makes creates that rippling in the pond of the multiverses, but she judgement and she needs to make that _judgement call, _before they...All. Fall. Down.

She takes the shot.

_For once, love does not conquer all._

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**That was the longest one yet! Whew, I had a hell of a time composing it. I lost the original draft for this chapter that I wrote in class, but whatever. I always imagined either Raquel, Barbara, Artemis, or M'gann in this chapter, I guess.**

**Review!**


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